Privacy and the database state in the news

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas receives OBE

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has been honoured in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List and has been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

But there has been speculation around Westminster that Thomas, whose term of office expires at the end of this month, has received recognition at a lower level than his status might suggest.

Thomas was indirectly responsible for the MPs’ expenses row by ruling that politicians’ spending should be published after a Freedom of Information request for the details was originally rejected by the government.

He has also been highly critical of privacy scandals involving lost data at the Ministry of Defence, HM Revenue and Customs and other government departments, as well as warning of the risk to individual privacy posed by creating a central database on personal information for the national ID card.

Thomas has perhaps become most famous for coining the phrase “sleepwalking into a surveillance society” in an interview with The Times in 2004.